By Common Games and Hobbies

How much can we relate to another by our common hobbies and games? I play basketball and so do you- do we better understand each other via this common behavior? If I have played a game I have likely experienced the same flights of glee and disappointment that you have. We also play videogames. Have you played that certain title? Oh, you have? Wasn’t that one level exciting? Oh, you struggled to? So did I, so did I.

Common experiences may not help us understand another’s perspective of the world, but it remains a shared experience nonetheless. Globalization has allowed culture to spread throughout the world. So vast has this expansion spread cultural items that a North Korean boy can play the same videogame that I can. Of course not all North Korean boys can play that game but certainly one can, and did, as the media has reported.

If reports are true, Kim Jung-un, the recently “appointed”? supreme leader of North Korea, enjoyed playing videogames. Did he play the games that I played? Has he struggled through the same levels that I have? Did he grow frustrated on that one way too difficult mission as I did? Videogames were an essential component of my childhood. They provided me with hours of entertainment and functioned as the dominant source of narrative in my life. What books and film were to older generations, videogames were for me and many in my generation, the major way we learned the narrative form.

Put bluntly, my brain has been where Jung-un’s brain has been. Though separate, we’ve ventured through the same pixelated mazes and puzzles. Do I know him more for sharing this? How much can we assume to be shared via these common behaviors? Do my hobbies make me know you? Do you know me by the games we’ve played?